[cj]

One question candidates like to ask me: "What's your biggest challenge over the next year? Next 5 years?"

and then.. "How is this role contributing toward solving that challenge?" (Sometimes people replace "challenges" with "vision" or "goal")

These question catches me off guard sometimes. But if I were the candidate, they are great questions to expose whether a company is hiring this role to fix a problem (if so there are probably very specific expectations) or are they hiring the role to make a good thing better.

Dirty secret about interviews: there are very few questions a candidate can ask that would leave a negative impression. You can literally ask "Are you profitable?" or "What is the turnover rate of your team?" or "If you had to improve our team culture, what's one thing you would change?" or even "I've worked at a lot of companies that don't know what they're doing. What's your plan?"

On the interviewer side, there's also very few questions candidates won't answer. I always ask what their salary expectations are, where they are in the process with other companies, how they like to be managed, etc --- occasionally there's someone who's dodgy with these questions, but 95% of candidates are extremely transparent. I return the favor by happily answering any questions a candidate asks. It's a big decision on both sides to hire someone or accept an offer, so no point in putting on a facade.

[mcny]

Thank you for the insightful comment.

One small nit though

> I always ask what their salary expectations are

I thought we were supposed to never answer this question. Why do you even bother asking this question? You have a budget for any role, right? Why not share this information instead of asking people how much they want? Does it matter if I want a million dollars a year?

[Terretta]

> I thought we were supposed to never answer this question.

It is legal to ask what they're looking for or "expect".

It is not legal in many US jurisdictions (California, New York as notable ones) to ask what they made at their prior job.

The first question is necessary since the numbers have to start somewhere.

The second question tends to perpetuate any comp bias the interviewee may have been subject to previously.

That said, as the interviewee, it's fair to turn the order of setting expectations on its head: “I hear your question, but first, what are you expecting to spend to fill this?”

If they object you can try again: “You are a differentiated business with differentiated priorities, meaning your roles provide different returns on investment relative to other companies. What value do you put on this role?”

If they object again, and you are confident in your value creation, try: “One of us has to start with expectations, so I'll start with this — based on my prior roles, I expect to have fully paid for myself within the first X days/weeks/months. My expectation is that will be true here as well.”

Reality is a candidate's dollar "value" to a firm does in fact depend on the utility the firm can make of that skill. This is largely out of the candidate's control. As such, the firm should reveal the range they have in mind first.

[mathgeek]

> The first question is necessary since the numbers have to start somewhere.

It’s not, though. The only thing asking the candidate for a number specifically generates is leverage for the company performing the interview. The company can just as easily provide a range to start “the numbers” and display good will to boot.

[mrmetanoia]

It's like they've started applying that 'value based' pricing bullshit to salaries.

[mathgeek]

I’m sure they do that somewhere. Most places it’s a simple “this chart shows industry salaries favor the employer by some percentage when the following question is asked” during training.

[makeitdouble]

> I thought we were supposed to never answer this question.

As a candidate that's the first question I get, and as an interviewer it also helps a lot.

I understand the risk to abuse the info to low ball a candidate, but setting an expectation level as early as possible helps to better target the interview process and be more efficient when it won't work out.

If someone is asking for a CTO level salary but but we're seeing they'd fit an entry level position, it needs to be discussed at the second round, not at the last round after both sides spent 6h of overall process.

Having the info earlier also helps better target the interview, in particular to justify the person fits in the role. If you're only doing 2~3 interview, they better be well targeted.

[cj]

> Why do you even bother asking this question?

If someone is asking for $250k and we're budgeting $150k, I don't want to waste their (and my) time.

[throwaway6977]

If that's the case perhaps you could, I don't know, state that up front and save everyone some time...

[cj]

(Last reply I’ll post here): I guess just to be ultra clear so there’s no ambiguity.

At our company no candidate talks to anyone at our company before talking to our 3rd party recruiter who screens all candidates before they make it to us. The recruiter has short 15-20 min pre-screening calls with candidates and she’s responsible for weeding out candidates who are likely to not be a fit.

A major category to evaluate is mutual compensation expectations (what are they expecting to be paid, what are we expecting to pay).

I don’t have full visibility into how our recruiter articulates this part of the screening call. She says some candidates don’t have a salary in mind, in which case she shares the lower bound of our range to feel them out.

All roles have a salary range, e.g. could be $130-160k. We don’t just come out and say that, otherwise everyone will want the top end of the range, even if (in our opinion) their experience matches closer to the bottom or middle of the range.

It’s an art, not a science. My goal is to not overpay for a role if we don’t have to. (Important: overpay doesn’t mean underpay!) more importantly, I want the person we’re hiring to be happy with the compensation. I don’t want to hire someone who’s going to quit in 6 months for a higher paying role.

It’s a negotiation and both sides are trying to find the “market rate” through the process. You can be bitter about this fact, but it’s a simple reality in business. That’s just how things work.

[FireBeyond]

> otherwise everyone will want the top end of the range, even if (in our opinion) their experience matches closer to the bottom or middle of the range.

My perspective of this, sometimes stated, sometimes not, is that if I'm getting the offer I should at least be in the top 50% of the range.

Why?

How many candidates did you interview, with all their experiences, some more than me, some less than me, but you chose me, which means you saw me as the highest caliber candidate, but you also see me as "closer to the bottom of the range"? Barring other contributing factors, "does not compute".

[cj]

I can’t speak for every company.

As a 12 person engineering team, we really need a strong team lead or someone who we can put on a management track over the next 2-3 years (SWE to Lead to EM to Director to VP). We prefer to promote from within rather than hire those roles directly.

So, the top end of our range for engineering roles right now is reserved for people with management potential because we’re willing to pay a premium for that, but doesn’t mean we will reject good individual contributors.

(This is my last reply on this thread, the debate could go on, e.g. “how do you know if someone has management potential”, etc - hiring and finding a job is an art, not a science, no right answers, nothing is perfect)

[massung]

> ...e.g. could be $130-160k. We don’t just come out and say that, otherwise everyone will want the top end of the range, even if (in our opinion) their experience matches closer to the bottom or middle of the range.

I hope you can see the hypocrisy in this statement: you want the candidate to take on the risk you're unwilling to, in a situation where you hold all the cards.

What if a candidate said $110k? Would you still offer them $160k if you felt they were worth that? Or would you take advantage of this newfound information and offer them less than what you thought the job was worth to you?

Because of this - as a candidate - when someone asks me "what salary are you looking for?" it's an immediate turn-off for me. I pretty much refuse to answer the question or ask what the salary range is for the company.

My favorite thing that a company can do regarding comp is to publicly state what their roles, titles, and salary ranges for those are. Then specify in the job description what title they are hiring for and link to that information.

This absolutely is great for the already-working employees as well as candidates. Knowing what title I am, how much I can expect my compensation to be upon promotion, etc. is beneficial for everyone. You can also publicly state the trade-offs your company has chosen to make regarding compensation and attract candidates who appreciate those things.

Perhaps your base salary is lower than the norm, but you offer other things that make up for it. Examples of things worth more to me than base salary:

* More vacation time * 100% remote * 100% medical coverage * 9+% 401K match * ESPP, RSUs, ... * Very short vesting times * Paid child care (possibly on-site)

The list goes on. I guarantee - unless you are grossly underpaying your employees - that if you just publicly list title : salary, heavily promote your other benefits, and have recruiters link to that, you'll end up being much better off.

[latency-guy2]

> What if a candidate said $110k? Would you still offer them $160k if you felt they were worth that? Or would you take advantage of this newfound information and offer them less than what you thought the job was worth to you?

I will answer from the things that I control, but yes I would offer what I believe their value is to me. The number given to me by a candidate is just the conversation we have to ensure we are in each other's ballpark. If my budget is in range and your performance in the interview is good to excellent you will be getting good to excellent pay in my organization from my say on the matter.

But there are absolutely things I don't control. E.g. my company participates in regional pay adjustments on salary.

Negotiations provided other competing offers are things HR have effectively full control over, at best I can recommend an uplevel for exceptional talent here to keep in budget for a particular role, but this is determined sooner at the evaluations stage.

The process to uplevel may require input from other managers in my org, my manager, and my skip (maybe even my skip's skip which is pretty much C-suite) to approve depending on experience so its an uphill battle even for me to do this.

Lowest friction is to bring you in at the level I have approved and then get you promoted within the year, but this would likely not be ideal for the candidate as on-hire package items would not be adjusted. OTOH, given a certain level of visibility and impact, you would be eligible for special awards and extra bonus pay which would likely exceed the amortized scheduled of an uplevel on its own for a single year.

[rsanek]

You must not be a US-based company -- many states / cities now require posting salary ranges on job ads. Based on population, it covers ~25% of all US workers https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/03/where-us-companies-have-to-s...

[eric-hu]

I’m currently job seeking. Some companies apply to the letter of this but still share almost no information. I’ve seen salary ranges like 140-280k. In essence that tells me the company still wants to not overpay like the parent comment said.

[Salgat]

Market rate is based on the responsibilities of the job, not on what a single candidate might want. My advice is to not try to negotiate down on what you're going to offer a candidate, just state the responsibilities of the job, the expected compensation, and let the best match fill that. This isn't a menial job where you can swap in a new employee quickly, but is a major investment where an extra 5-10% could save you a large amount of wasted effort when this person moves on to the next company using his time at your company to close that wage gap you created. It always amazed me that companies would fight over a relatively small amount, lowering retention rates, while paying massive amounts towards recruiting and training of new employees.

[ponector]

Market rate is based on probability of finding candidate to accept the lowest possible rate. It does not really depends on responsibilities.

A person can double the salary for the same responsibilities simply moving to the other company/location.

And yes, company will easily accept higher attrition than increase salary by 10%. Now even more so, and will hire for lower salary because there are so many desperate unemployed people who have no choice but to accept huge pay cut.

[mekoka]

Newsflash my friend, candidates always have a number in mind, even if they're not sharing it. By disclosing only your lower bound rather than the full range of your compensation, I'm pretty sure you're doing yourself a disservice. When people apply for a position at one company, they're probably also interviewing at 10 others. A good engineer that seemed (to you) unsure about comp will eventually pass the first round at places that are more transparent with a number that hits your undisclosed upper range (just the fact that such places exist should hint at something wrong about your beliefs). That'll then solidify a ballpark figure for that candidate. Guess what happens then. At best, your lower bid puts you in a low priority pile. At worst, if you're then willing to revise that number when the candidate later tells you it's too low, you look like a company with a culture of trying to lowball engineers.

Instead of being cagey about comp, do your own homework. Determine how much filling the role is worth (which should also include cost of keeping it vacant). Disclose a range to candidates. Evaluate them for your needs and determine what you're willing to compensate them based on your own estimation of their competence. If there's a mismatch between their expectations and yours, that's where negotiations should begin.

Not overpaying for a role if you don't have to? How much is "overpaying"? You're a business, so shop like one. Don't play games with nickel and dime accounting. Put a number on resources. Acquire them and move it to expenses. Then go back to getting things done.

[theonething]

throwaway6977 made a perfectly logical point and you come back with the most BS comment I've seen on HN in a long time.

> We don’t just come out and say that, otherwise everyone will want the top end of the range, even if (in our opinion) their experience matches closer to the bottom or middle of the range.

Of course candidates would want the top range. You don't have to give it to them if you feel that don't deserve it.

Again, you claim don't want to waste people's time including your own, so just post range and then if people don't like it, they won't apply. What's so hard about that?

> That’s just how things work.

No it's not. Plenty of companies post their salary ranges. It's perfectly within your right to choose not too. I have no problem with that. The part I'm criticizing is your hypocritical self-justification for it.

[BurningFrog]

This is not how price negotiations work.

[c0mbonat0r]

how should a candidate respond if they arent sure what range this role should pay?

[vkou]

Answer honestly. That their pay expectations depend on the details of the job.

[marcosdumay]

So, you just push the interviewed to guess a random number without any context, and discard the ones that guess wrong.

That's great! There's also that method of throwing paper curriculums up on a stair, and discarding the ones that land on the wrong steps.

[cj]

No. More like:

Recruiter: “what are your compensation requirements?

Candidate: “$250k”

Recruiter: “Ah, that’s too bad. We were thinking this role would pay closer to $150k. Are you still interested in moving forward?”

Candidate: (negotiate…)

[icedchai]

I had some recruiter contact me, immediately asks for my salary expectations. I give him a range, between 10% to 20% higher than I'm currently making. They come back with 50K less than I'm making now. "Thanks, but I don't think I am the right fit, this is significantly less than I am making now for what sounds like more responsibilities."

A few hours later, the come back... offering 30K less than I'm making now. "I just talked to the manager and we are willing to come up!" I told him thanks again, but under no circumstances would I take less I was making now. Did he think I was kidding about the initial range? I never heard from him again.

[looshch]

if you think 3rd party recruiters usually do this, you are out of touch with reality

[vkou]

If you've gotten to the point of an in-person interview, before bringing it up, you're absolutely wasting everyone's time.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

What? Have you ever hired before? This sounds exactly like the unrealistically simple view of someone that’s never been in this position before.

You thought people were never supposed to answer that question? Well, they do. Especially developers, who are more introverted than average, on average, and are easy to catch off guard.

I have a budget, sure. Unless your corporate setup is one that especially takes all power away from hiring managers, it’s almost always more complex than that. Maybe I could move some money around to free more budget up. Maybe someone on my team is a retention risk and I need to weigh up priorities. Maybe a billion billion other things.

Your personal budget, no matter how implicit or explicit it is, almost certainly isn’t this simple so I have no idea why anyone thinks it works this way at work. Any organisation that is that simple and rigid isn’t capable of rolling with the punches, and isn’t somewhere anyone should want to work.

[sensanaty]

> I always ask what their salary expectations are...

My reply is pretty much always "What's your budget?". If they tell me the budget, I say the top of what they said or sometimes a bit above it (because it's pretty much a guarantee that they're lying about the real budget), if they don't or try weasel out of it, I tell them I'm not comfortable answering without knowing what I should realistically be looking at (and they get negative points from my POV, because why be sneaky with this kind of info?)

It's a shitty question born out of the company trying to screw candidates if they say the wrong number unknowingly. Too high of an expectation? That's a negative mark. Too low? Great, we can fuck them over by underpaying them 20% below what we would've if we'd just posted the salary.

Same with all the other similar ones. Where am I in the process with others? None of your business, I just say I'm not interviewing with anyone else.

[YZF]

I am a hiring manager. I don't have a budget. What I have are different comp levels that depend on the engineer's level. It's not in my interest to underpay an engineer and I'm not approaching the hiring process as trying to pay a candidate as little as possible. I'm trying to find a good hire and I want them to be happy working for me. I've worked for many tech companies and I've never seen anywhere there was some specific budget number attached to hiring an engineer.

That's not to say there isn't some element of negotiation but it's generally at the margins (definitely not 20%).

The reason I might ask about expectations is just not to waste people's time, not to screw the candidate. I ask about your process with others to know if I should try and get through the process faster on my side. Having a competitive offer might be relevant for the negotiation process but again it's at the margins. You also need to consider your compensation over time, you might be hired at a slightly higher comp but then it won't get adjusted as quickly.

Once we've interviewed a candidate and have a good sense of where we think they are in terms of their level, and decide we want to hire them, then there's no problem sharing the numbers with them, at this point that's an offer. Before we can estimate the candidate's level I don't really think it's useful to tell them that if they're a "level 10" (or whatever) then the salary range is 44,000 to 46,000 dollars (or whatever). If a company posts a range of 100-300k for a software engineering role that doesn't mean that every candidate can negotiate a 320k salary. It means they're ok with hiring someone relatively junior at 100k or paying a significantly stronger candidate 300k.

What I'm trying to say is that with a good employer there is actually alignment and win-win here. If you're dealing with a bad employer who is trying to take advantage of you there are probably better signals for that. The engineering manager who is hiring you into a large tech company is generally motivated to hire a good engineer and make sure they're happy.

[eschneider]

It's the same on the candidate side. I know when I interview, what it'll take to bring me on board depends a lot on the company, the team, and what the position looks like. For something I absolutely want to be a part of, because all of the above are incredible, it's not going to take as much in compensation as a place that's not perfect in one aspect or another, but is otherwise nice at the right price.

But I won't know where the company sits on that spectrum until after the interview.

[ryandrake]

> For something I absolutely want to be a part of, because all of the above are incredible, it's not going to take as much in compensation as a place that's not perfect in one aspect or another, but is otherwise nice at the right price.

On the other side of this, there exist a compensation amount, above which I will accept a job offer knowing nothing about the company, am willing to suffer through almost any job or working condition, regardless of whether I believe in the company's mission, want to be a part of the company, where I'll simply say yes sight unseen. No company has even remotely gotten close to this number with their actual offer, but nonetheless I must admit the number exists. If a company just asks "how much do you want?" I don't see any harm in giving them that number. If they are OK with it, jackpot. If not, we negotiate way down from there after I learn more about the company.

[sensanaty]

In my experience (and I've been on both sides plenty of times) - There's always a budget. Call it a band, a range, whatever, the budget exists, and in many jurisdictions the world (and even within different states in the US) over you have to specify what that budget is for any given position. Some places are better than others, like settings a ridiculous range that tells you nothing (100k - 300k like your example) useful, to be fair.

Usually, a job post will be for a specific role. A senior, principal, medior, junior, L9, ABC123, doesn't matter, a rank is usually attached to the job description. At least from what I've seen (and I'm sure this part does vary a lot company to company and role by role, but IME it's pretty rigid with tiny allowances for things like mediors switching to a senior position and stuff like that), the business is pretty adamant on hiring for the advertised role, and not someone who's over/under the role. If you're hiring a senior, how often is it that you'll take a junior instead? Presumably there's a reason the posting says senior. I've seldom ever seen free-range postings, and I'd definitely never apply to one either.

> ...then there's no problem sharing the numbers with them...

But that's the problem, you're only informing them at the offer stage about what their compensation could be, and they still have no clue whether you're screwing them over. Many people don't realize/aren't comfortable with negotiating for higher pay, I've known a surprising number of people who take the offer as-is (or don't) with no follow up or negotiation.

If you give people the range from the start (preferably before they ever even send the application in the first place), you're saving everyone's time and also setting expectations early on for all parties. People who'd balk at the range would just not apply, and you'd get more candidates who are more likely to accept whatever you end up deciding on.

> What I'm trying to say is that with a good employer there is actually alignment and win-win here.

And I think this is a bit of a naive viewpoint. The business has no reason not to fuck you over, and they in fact often do. And it makes perfect sense why they would, after all especially SWE's are expensive to employ, but regardless of if it's understandable or not, it's still a shitty and lopsided dynamic that heavily leans in the favor of the corporation.

[rsanek]

The best compensation results I got in my job searching history was when I told all the companies up-front what my timeline was and what week I was going to be making a decision, right at the beginning of the process (month+ in advance). I told them I am doing so with multiple other companies, which allowed me to align timelines and negotiate with many offers-in-hand.

[oblio]

When did you last look for a job?

[brobdingnagians]

I know someone who was asked what the lowest they would take was, they answered honestly and then got screwed over by immediately being offered that exact number. The company had a much higher budget. If a company asks you that question, run. That's just a red flag for other problems lurking.

[jart]

How is that screwing someone over? Maybe the company said that because the candidate was slightly underqualified for the role, and they would only hire if they felt like they were getting a deal and not taking too much risk. The low ball offer is better than a no. If I was being hired like that, I might view it as a foot in the door to prove how valuable I am. Besides you can always keep interviewing after you're hired to find better offers. Even if you don't take them, it'll give you more bargaining power.

[paretoer]

I would say it is a completely underhanded way to negotiate and I love negotiating. The only good answer to that bullshit question is "The maximum you are willing to pay". Then you can start over with a real negotiation.

The best way to understand the company culture is by what is asked on the interview and what the person doing the interview is like.

This question tells you everything you need to know about the company culture and that it is not going to be a good experience.

[jart]

Underhanded? Why don't you tell me what it means to you? If someone asked me what the minimum money I'm willing to take is, then I guess I might think they're the kind of company that would ask me questions like, "what's the minimum amount of RAM your program will need in production?" and stuff like that. Shrug.

[cj]

> It's a shitty question born out of the company trying to screw candidates

Or a startup hiring for a job title they’ve never hired for before and they literally don’t know what the market rate is?

We just hired our first SRE. We knew what we wanted for in the role but had no idea how to price it. What are we supposed to do other than ask candidates what their salary expectations are? There’s no bible saying what “market rate” is for every given role.

You’re selling your services to an employer. It’s the candidate’s responsibility to know their worth and coherently communicate their worth to prospective employers. Just my opinion.

[eschneider]

Market salary information is out there and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out where you, as a company, want to place yourself. If you're going into interviews literally not knowing what the market rate is, you're wasting everyone's time.

Yes, it's a candidate's responsibility to know their worth and communicate it to prospective employers. If prospective employers are ignorant of the market, they just look like they're unprofessional.

[jiveturkey]

> There’s no bible saying what “market rate” is for every given role

there actually is. there are multiple salary benchmarks available. you should be using one.

[marcosdumay]

If you go after one (or a few) person in particular, it's ok to ask that question. In fact, if you go after one person in particular that you know is a great fitting, there is almost no power disparity and lots of things become ok.

But if you decide to just poll undifferentiated candidates to extract valuable information, well, that's really not ok.

[sensanaty]

Are you telling me startups don't have budgets predetermined before the role is ever even posted?

[cj]

Yes, for roles we’ve never hired for.

In which case to find the market salary, we ask candidates (candidates are the market, we want to pay market rates. So, we ask candidates)

[mlhpdx]

This isn’t just startups.

Some companies have “bands” that define the range of pay for given titles, but many don’t. Even those that do are constantly questioning whether they are the right ones based on a wide variety of factors: Are salaries moving up, or moving down? Are there few candidates, or many? Is the value of this role to the company increasing or decreasing? Does the company have the cash flow? Will it have the cash flow in six months or a year? Etc.

Sitting on either side of the hiring relationship it’s easy to simplify and vilify the other side. But it’s foolish to do so. Over time in your career folks may be on each, in turn.

[lubujackson]

I dunno, a two minute LinkedIn search or Glassdoor search will give you all kinds of metrics for all kinds of roles and for companies at different stages, so I don't at all buy this argument.

Especially for developers, you can get a crazy range of quality, experience and location at different multiples of cost. Like if I was buying a car I first determine my needs and money to spend then start searching in that band of prices. What if I just went to a cqr salesman and asked how much are you expecting to make from this sale? Is that a smart starting point for anyone?

[tbrownaw]

If I ask my favorite search engine for "technology salary guide", there are several first-page results that at least claim to provide just this.

Are these less reliable that they look like they think they are, or... ?

[mito88]

5 years: "In five years, I see myself as an important part of this organization, having grown in my role and contributing to the company's success...."

next year: "achieve 20% of the above..."

:)